This short is very cute and funny yet kind of sad and poignant at the same time, those poor service robots have no idea what's happened to the rest of the world beyond their desolate little gas station as they carry on with their mundane tasks, unable to break away from their programs unless ordered to do so, but one old helper robot who misses his fellow robot friend is determined to leave the confines of his world to find him no matter what as cybernetic oblivion looms upon them all due to the failing power reserves... I really love this short, it's very engaging and has a great rustic atmosphere and look to it, it was terrifically animated, I felt so sad for the lead robot called Jimbo as he kept enquiring as to where all the humans were and getting the same response every time, and when he sets out into the great unknown at the end it's still not really a happy ending but it's better than if he just stayed where he was like the rest of them. It's a bit of a nihilistic animation, but it was also profound and thematically rich to me, it reminded me of another short animation from the superb anthology Love, Death and Robots that was about three lovable robots in a post apocalyptic world, but this was a bit less jokey than that one was, and it was no less great! Excellent short, moving, thoughtful and it presented a strongly realised world within its short time frame, everyone always says this about every short they like but I would seriously love to have a whole movie of this, I thought it was just that damn good! X.
2 Reviews
when the light dies
myriamlenys29 June 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Earth, somewhere in the near future. A gas station located in an isolated desert area is serviced by a variety of robots, who take care of charges such as cleaning, waste disposal, general tourist information and so on. After a while the robots notice a persistent absence of human customers...
A well-done and poignant animation short, which raises a key question : given that our various servant machines are getting so advanced that they might become sentient or near-sentient, does this mean that they too would realize that their lives are but short intervals bookended between two vast eternities ? At the same time "Big Boom" makes an important point, to wit that the only things worth remembering in death are the only things worth living for in life : friendship, tenderness, love.
Good soundtrack and good voice work, by the way.
It's not entirely clear what happened to humankind, but a number of elements lead one to think either of a nuclear catastrophe or a nuclear war. It's an uncomfortably realistic doom scenario. Still, we humans can bring along our collective suicide in other ways. In case you, dear reader, are cursed with a loud-mouth uncle fond of hitting his fist on the table and proclaiming things like "This whole climate change thing is a plot cooked up by godless liberal traitors !", you may want to point the said uncle to the temperature statistics for Europe. This June, my own country of Belgium has been struck by a sweltering heatwave (see the statistics on the KMI website). We are yet fortunate compared to our neighbour France, which has had to postpone thousands of exams, performances, operations, festivities ; which is on a screaming red alert for forest fires ; and which has seen - or is seeing - temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius and more (!!!). For both countries, it confirms a pattern of ever higher record temperatures.
This may very well become the actual way life ends on this planet, and sooner than we think.
A well-done and poignant animation short, which raises a key question : given that our various servant machines are getting so advanced that they might become sentient or near-sentient, does this mean that they too would realize that their lives are but short intervals bookended between two vast eternities ? At the same time "Big Boom" makes an important point, to wit that the only things worth remembering in death are the only things worth living for in life : friendship, tenderness, love.
Good soundtrack and good voice work, by the way.
It's not entirely clear what happened to humankind, but a number of elements lead one to think either of a nuclear catastrophe or a nuclear war. It's an uncomfortably realistic doom scenario. Still, we humans can bring along our collective suicide in other ways. In case you, dear reader, are cursed with a loud-mouth uncle fond of hitting his fist on the table and proclaiming things like "This whole climate change thing is a plot cooked up by godless liberal traitors !", you may want to point the said uncle to the temperature statistics for Europe. This June, my own country of Belgium has been struck by a sweltering heatwave (see the statistics on the KMI website). We are yet fortunate compared to our neighbour France, which has had to postpone thousands of exams, performances, operations, festivities ; which is on a screaming red alert for forest fires ; and which has seen - or is seeing - temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius and more (!!!). For both countries, it confirms a pattern of ever higher record temperatures.
This may very well become the actual way life ends on this planet, and sooner than we think.
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